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He wasn’t innocent. Isaac was unsure if that was aimed at the blonde in front of him, the perfect picture of everything wrong with humans commodifying the seygein system, or himself.
The way pure and noble principles were tortured out of him, like Jacob’s corpse still smiling despite his pulled-out teeth, or Hyuna’s gracious grin before he saw her shot red bleeding on said stage. The millions of humans, rebel or in spirit, with their necks leashed up or have their brains dashed out, Isaac just was not innocent. He could not hold onto such ideals anymore.
These values were malformed, he knew that, because he was a hypocrite. Isaac was the next leader of the rebellion now, in the gap his loved ones made that he buried himself in. He hated seygeins, he hated the guards (especially human ones), he hated the performance and the stages and singing, especially now.
Dewey gave him an all too wary look nowadays, particularly when he said he was running a security check around the sector while they both knew the aliens were too cowardly to pass into their areas now. Reprimanded by the rocket’s fire. He argued he needed the drive, get these legs back working after too much time in rehabilitation. Till, ever mute, gave him a judgmental look, yet passed him the helmet anyway.
Honestly, Isaac didn’t even know how he got here. The said security check had no place coming in as far into the heart of the research sector, with its beyond heightened security already. He only managed to find the building which was placed at the very outskirts, as if it was trying to hide itself too. It sounds about right with how many aliens were rioting human pet usage any longer, too dangerous for experimentation apparently. The sector was abandoned, used to be for lab-grown humans. There was nothing to check here.
Yet innocence was instinctual, born with an ever-dying sympathy for one another. That was the foundation the human rebellion was born on. From the words of his long-lost brother, carried by hands upon hands who believed until it rested uneasily in his grip. From Hyuna, her love bore whole and open, he felt it drip from his eyes every time he thought of her. They somehow took his hand, forcing him to drive all the way out here; as if it was fate.
Isaac cursed under his breath, willing the tears from his eyes, vevving the handle one last time.
“Get on already.” Isaac snarled at the other, who was blinking- that rather than apathetic looked plain blank.
The other man’s feet were tiptoeing the jagged edge, the remains of the window Isaac practically head-butted his motorcycle into as to enter the patient’s room. The other’s bandaged face and medical wear, too tight to be comfortable, made Isaac somehow more mad. Isaac did not know where this anger came from either. Maybe he was hating the fact the other man was just standing still, with that sardonic face of his. Finally, there was the scuffle of guards, after the alarm roared once the window shattered, Isaac grabbed the other man’s wrist, then hip, to throw him on the motorcycle.
Isaac felt the other wiggle, uncomfortable in the foreign seat, before he rode off out the broken window. Isaac clicked his tongue, as they jumped in an arc, to skid safely onto the upcoming bridge. The additional passenger was forced to frantically grip onto Isaac’s waist, the rebel half-grinning now as he gets to revert to that principled, free persona. He could at least rely on this excitement. Isaac granted himself a simple rude middle finger at the approaching guards before driving out.
It was when they were across the bridge, out of sight of any intrusive camera with the rising sun making out of the ash of the smoky skies, where Isaac half-heartedly shoved his helmet onto the other man. It would be funny if he cracked his head, Isaac cynically thought, before returning to berating himself. This was the height of stupidity, widely unprepared that he could be easily killed in this sham of a rescue mission, and for what?
This guy? He heard second-hand gossip that made him shiver, stories from others who watched or even in those stage recordings— cruel purple in the lights to the tips of his fingers.
Despite that, Isaac kept driving, especially when he felt the other’s hands shake. Said fingers knitted too hard onto one another, the bruising colour nearly ash, forced to hold onto him. Feeling the rabbit-heart beat jolting from the other’s chest to his, carrying it whole.
Luka leaned his cheek onto Isaac’s back, as he tried to ignore the blonde’s wheezing. An ugly pull of air, drowsy and hypnagogic, as Luka was waking up only to cry.
Isaac cursed his innocence, his empathy, his principles. He cursed Hyuna for leaving too soon beyond their silent promises. He cursed the seygeins, the beasts. He despised Luka tenfold.
He most importantly cursed how beautiful it seemed, riding across the red rising daylight with mad glee; that Isaac felt his chest clear and free, ever since that night of rockets’ fire. It was almost like he could yearn again. For his brother to praise him, pat his shoulders and smile gently at how he grew into a leader. Maybe have another lopsided kiss with Hyuna, casual and sweet, over a shared cigarette.
Still Isaac saved someone. He did something. Not stand there, tearing up and shivering, with another corpse cold in hand.
He just needed to keep driving.
Father’s lectures were always rooted in either insecurity or anger, mostly both. Luka learnt that ever since he could think. Father was insecure over the fact that Luka was so small, his skeleton too brittle and muscles too flawed to grant him a taller height, that his son couldn’t be his warped taller, better version of himself on stage. Performing in the light.
After the stage fire, Father was furious. He must be when Luka’s lungs couldn’t transport enough oxygen or when the pacing of his heart would not reach a satisfactory level, until Father cleaned him up. Cast a scalpel into the skin. Tear at the ends of the burn. Father told him that was how he found him in the fires, rescuing him with dedicated care, lecturing him on the burnt side of his face.
Luka half-remembered it. He knew his arm socket was practically ripped out when Father chased him down in season’s ruins, tearing him apart from the cremated remains of Hyuna. Luka was tossed into surgeries after surgeries, reprimands upon reprimands, and he was alive. Luka believed that at sometime, like another lifetime or even another clone, he had wanted to be discarded. In peace, a dead-line.
On stage, oh my life is mine.
On the rim of the next medical light, Luka saw the eclipse of her face. He saw purple, red, an influx of lights hitting the back of his skull as Father extracted cells from his retina, matching skin collages over his scars, the IV familiar and dreamy, as he saw her. Luka could see two of them now; both collapsed in broken black onto his neck, chest and hands, over the hospital gown. Hyuna. Hyunwoo.
Luka pitifully sobbed, half-grinning, gasping at the phantoms above his bed. It was lucky Father clasped his hands down for procedures, or he would be trying to tear the feelings from his neck.
He has readily accepted this effect to be from the IV’s substances, or the influx of new medicines he had to take now (in addition to the pulmonary and circulatory beforehand), but also how when the senses are deprived. The heart is stressed, valves on the brink of bursting, your body hallucinates. Luka attributed the physical visions to that. Yet he cannot quite solve why mentally, on why he was giddy and sobbing at the sight of Hyuna and Hyunwoo chasing him.
A hand outstretched.
They were still waiting, behind the glass of Luka’s private room. It was when he was sleeping that they allowed only cameras to watch him, no guards or Heperu. He placed his patchworked hand against theirs, the hallucinations, unable to hold it before Luka punched at it. It broke the newly sewn skin, bruising, making an ugly slap of his flesh that he wanted to wither off. Die already, he told himself, they are waiting right there.
Then he saw their shared brown hair, shimmering eyes curled with such emotion he couldn’t grasp, plucked out right there across in the alley. Then Luka readjusted his eyes, slamming his fist for the last time, to see the green hood and large scar over a male human’s face— lightly familiar, scattered in his memories of the stage. One of her rebels. On those cycling vehicles, that those rebels rode on, Luka tilted his head at the sight.
The man before him was staring for too long, matching his eyes with a disbelieving, furious look. Yet then he hunched over, maybe to roll over and die, simple as that, before Luka noticed the other was laughing. Laughing at the sight of his face. He knit his eyebrows together, biting his lip. The eyebrows, the twitches in his shoulders. Trying to find a source of the other man’s vulnerabilities on display, before the man made a motion with his hands, still mid-chuckle.
Back away.
Used to orders, Luka obeyed and immediately the man backed up the vehicle before rushing rather stupidly into said glass. Luka blinked. Stumbled, then cracking that sounded too crystallised to be bone.
Shards shot out, biting at his feet, as he fell in surprise. It was rather accurate with the rebel landing on a skid into his room. Suddenly there was blaring red, alarms, and a garbling of noises. He stood there blankly, staring at the blurry face of the rebel. Fluorescent warnings warm the air as they both trade unreadable stares. Luka half-wonders if this is how he dies; not even granted sanctity of death on stage. It was either that, or on an operating bed, eventually.
The other rebel. Black and brown and skinny pupils. Almost like Hyuna. Yet the other’s frame was too large, mounting over that Luka only barely reached his chin. Masculine. Brash in an unappealing way. His voice wasn’t melodious, even when he was shouting something, Luka just blankly staring. Then suddenly, he was grabbed, thrown on, and nearly vomited in vertigo as the other rode off with him.
Luka gripped as tightly as he could, trying to figure out the skin and frame of the other. Puzzling out subtle points to jab his fingers in or maybe to figure out, that this was not her. Just one of her rebels. Despite the scathing feeling in his chest, Father’s hands will not be kind if he grabs me, yet Luka can only feel the warmth of the other human.
In his arms. Safety. Close enough to it, as they drive off somewhere— Luka gripping tighter. Safe within my arms.
Dewey’s words, the ever-loving dumbass he was, were unfortunately rattling in his head.
‘Him? Really? Trying to gain a saviour complex too?’
How eloquent. Isaac had stifled a sigh, so weary now that he even grabbed a drink. He didn’t even know what it was, other than the definite fact that it burned his insides enough that the shame outweighed itself.
‘Just don’t sympathise with this guy. He’s… different from the ones on stage.’
Even Till warned him.
Isaac clapped the bottle onto the table, figuring the taste to be vodka this time around. Dewey and Till was right. Isaac himself wasn’t happy with his decisions either, but as the de facto leader, this was his cross to carry.
Said cross-to-carry was standing right at the corner of the room. The bar was practically a graveyard, their beloved performer shot by one of their own and Isaac stood in place of the shadow of two failed leaders now. They at least kept the saccharine purple lights on. It made its undertones under blonde hair, making clinically pale skin look somewhat palatable; and Isaac was back to take another swing.
“Hey, you can sit, you know,” Isaac called out wetly. “No one’s staring. Well, no one here after all.”
Luka fixed him a look, practically a glare, but seemed to agree with the factual statement; that indeed the whole place was empty. He crept over, bowing his head almost lethargic. That, or the still curdling burns on his face had stung in moving.
Sitting next to him at the bar now, stool to stool, Isaac pondered his next action. He was already being overwhelmingly stupid bringing this guy along. Sooner or later some alien rescue force will come pick up their prince, or one of the rebels will decide it's his man’s turn to die, ending their combined miseries.
He decided instead to pick up another bottle from the crate at his feet, sliding it across. Luka fumbled and barely caught it as Isaac chortled.
“Quit staring like that and put that mouth to something.”
The other purses his lips at the crudeness, at the smell of alcohol or Isaac’s words. “It’s poison. Drink yourself to an early death without me.”
“C’mon. It's not like this is my habit we are indulging in here.” Isaac rolls his eyes, before he fully catches on to what he murmured. Impulsivity and drunkenness. No, he was this reckless from the start. Grief dulls self-discipline.
“You asked me about her. This is what she does.”
Isaac caught the flash of white hot anger across the placid face, giving him some bite of victory, before it was dulled back to perfection. The burn did make it harder to read however.
“Pitiful. Mere indulgence that fattens you.” The scar tugged ugly against his trembling eyebrows, “This isn’t her.”
Isaac gritted his teeth, and for the fourth time that day, he wanted to snap that wire-like neck. He loved her, he did too, yet Luka said it like it was a fact. Like he knew her.
“Like the one who killed her could say that.” He relishes the widening of the other’s eyes. “Yeah, remind me again, that the first time you saw her in years, she dies. Sure, maybe she didn’t get drunk and high in your pretty fantasy of her, so who gives you the right to dictate what who she is.”
Luka was seething, and Isaac could see the little perfect teeth baring out under his tongue. As if in preparation for combat, Luka hesitated but took a chug. Then he coughed, spluttered like some weak child, that Isaac still couldn’t believe this was the fight he chose.
“It was one of you who shot her.”
Another cruel joke rose in his lungs,
“Congrats. Evading the blame isn’t defending the fact that you yourself are the root of every single problem she had.” Isaac knew that wasn’t true, seygeins who wanted to bury and industrialise them were at fault, “Don’t give me that look, because you know it to be true. Was it the fact she ran away from you in the 49th season…or even since the Garden wasn’t obvious enough?”
To be fair, this was all just presumed. Hyuna had muttered before, almost secretively, her relationship to Luka but it always seemed too close to heart that even Isaac never got to know. Even when they were close.
Another swing, chug, that both of them were drinking too much. Luka was nearly tipped over, shaky, as he stood up.
“Your sordid ideals are what killed her, that you cannot face where common sense lies. You jump into endless danger, defiance, for a thrill. You killed her.”
“Nothing to say about what you did personally huh? Have to dig out at the desperate core philosophy we carry, that has more backbone than you as some lapdog idol.” Isaac had pointed a finger into Luka’s chest, making the other flinch. “She hates you, you know? She whispers it so loudly when she sleeps next to me-“
Something easy snapped. Luka had a little bit of vodka drool down his chin as he lunged forward. He pressed his nails into Isaac, trying to toss him down, into skin and into the hard bar table. Yet the other man was barely ribs at this point. Isaac simply had to stumble up to standing, pressed into the table’s edge, yet could land a precise punch across Luka’s face.
It was hard to hit a man when they were practically on symbolic crutches. Worse so that as he said those words, exploiting Hyuna for fickle momentary insults, felt like ash in his mouth. Isaac didn’t apologise however, just letting the other man claw at him, before he pushed him back stumbling but standing.
“You’re really that much in denial? You can’t hurt me and you can’t accept the fact that you hurt her.” Isaac muttered slowly, unsure why he was explaining if not trying to confess his own sins, “You’re not the only one who loves her.”
Perhaps that’s why. He wanted someone else to mourn with him with the same feelings he felt. Isaac heard the scattered lies and stories, the recordings of past seasons and the way Luka’s eyes were dazzled, blushing at the sight of her. How cruel was it, that the other one he found that shared the same extent of love, was this cruel, innocent man? A double-faced liar without even knowing it.
Per his thoughts, Luka’s face was halved. One was full of sharpened apathy, resolute in his counter-arguments to defend the stage. The other half was a near-teary man-child, unable to grapple with his own accidents.
“You hate me.” Luka coughed out, reddening face— that he either got drunk easily or was that emotional— with a tiny, trembling voice.
“Of course.”
Luka digs his fingers into his collar, “Why did you save me then?”
“…Because you miss her and you hate me.” Within the gap of their words, Isaac can only manhandle Luka away. It makes no difference how much the blonde fumed, spitting lies after lies, that made Isaac push and insult him back. Isaac knew his games, the ways Luka attempts to pick and choose his words to breach into your skin;
Hey. Hyuna, I miss you.
He was too drunk for this.
That followed one of many spats between him and that no-nonsense, yet nonsensical, rebel leader. Luka was only allowed himself to call him that, leader, in his mind. Clarifying that aloud would give strength to the other by giving him authority.
It was foolish. Over and over, with Isaac trying to guilt-trip him into understanding pain and suffering. Fellow empathy. All it brought to Luka’s mind was the possibility that Hyuna, as bright as she was, wanted to hurt him. But she did, her revenge splattered over him as Luka saw her and Hyunwoo even now at the tip of his bed. Reaching for his toes. His eyes and feet.
Their spats happened so often that it was practically like another stage performance. Other rebel humans there were caught in the cross-fire, maybe even numerically judging them once they started. It starts because Luka apparently said something too appalling, or Isaac tells some lie so casually that Luka seethes. He was yet to find the fracture he could open at, to draw and fix the puzzle that was adamant on lecturing him. He had to break Isaac.
Too similar, in ideologies and justice and sweet dark hair. Isaac was also bulky, he only had to dangle Luka by the wrists to stop him entirely. Like one of his clones, in his youth, hung in the air— useless, faithless, maybe that is why Luka kept fighting against Isaac. It was an intrusion, to be physically stopped so easily mid-argument. An instant victory.
It was the bodily aspect of that, the demobilisation of one’s flesh and forcing into it, that gave him the idea.
It was another argument, maybe Luka pitched first because the rebel base felt so isolating. Choking. He was used to being alone, but at least the aliens one-sidedly surrounded and celebrated him. Any time he stepped out of his room everyone scurried away out of sight, Isaac would be the only one not to run.
They were alone in the hallway, Isaac apparently making sure he wasn’t dead in his room, before Luka started the spat.
“—Oh, so keep denying yourself, say a gun killed her than the fact you keep dragging her back on stage. “ Isaac continued to argue, near the limit already if told by the eyebags hanging from his face. Ever busy for the de facto leader. “Every move of yours stuns her. You are her obstacle, to-“
“Your have no right to say who she was to me.” Luka cut in, his hands once again making tight grabs at the other’s elastic shirt.
“I can say whatever I like, because I am her friend and compatriot. We fought and we bled together and we laughed about it.” Isaac tilted his head, “What did you ever do for her that was nothing but suffering? Your face is the very product of that sick show.”
Luka hated him. Needed to make him small, quiet, peaceful. As Father did in the past, as he replicated, and how Luka desired to silence this man, he dragged him with all his strength down. The sudden movement made Isaac stumble, nearly hitting his head back against the wall. Isaac winced and Luka saw the precise moment.
He digs into Isaac’s face with his lips. Crushing it, biting at Isaac’s bottom lip as the other made a sound of absolute bewilderment, pain, but Luka kept going. Control, intimacy, to surgically enter and take over. Luka barely had stuck his tongue in when Isaac finally punched him squarely in the face.
They were both left gasping. Luka touched his bruised cheek, licking at the drool pulled over onto his lips. Isaac trembled, fists still clenched as if tempted, but there was something in his eyes that made Luka curl his own.
“You talk so much, yet get so overcome by one little thing.” Luka wheezed out, something manic comforting the crying inside. The bodily warmth was somewhat relieving.
“You- that wasn’t little, you fucking kissed me.” Isaac barely laughed, his eyebrows fixed, probably in disgust Luka gathered.
Kissed?
“You have a name for it? Kiss? You humans must be so debauched to have a term.” Luka tilted his head.
At that Isaac stopped, confusion replacing his features that bordered on pity which made Luka stumble,
“What- of course we do. That’s- Do you even know what it means? What it is supposed to represent?”
Ownership. Power. Possession. Father patting his cheek.
Luka’s lack of an answer combined with whatever expression (apathetic mostly) he had on his face made Isaac curse. He did not feel the same swell of control he was supposed to feel when they pressed lips, something akin to embarrassment made him hesitate. Yet it seemed to knock Isaac loose and inert. He needed to grasp a handle on this.
Luka crept forward again, almost stalking, yet Isaac let him. With watching eyes, his arm at Luka’s chest denying him any further, yet Luka crept up the other’s fingers, wet with his lips.
“You look stunned.” Luka murmured.
Luka was further confused when he saw Isaac turn red, not in growing methodical anger. It was a fluster, a heat in those eyes that was almost unreadable if Luka knew it came from admirers and fans. He gets reminded of the reproduction classes he had; organs at their crotches, mating, the sexual inclination to—
Luka lured further in.
“Do you apparently like this? This is what makes you silent?” A fresh vulnerability to exploit.
Isaac’s face wrenched, digging his arm further into Luka’s chest that he had to wince.
“What, so if not manipulation, you choose the second best option, seduction?” He scoffed, “You are disgusting.”
“Yet you’re tempted. Maybe because you haven’t spent any time enjoying the attention of others, maybe not even alone, too busy or too much in mourning.” Luka lifts his fingers up Isaac’s exposed arm, the scuffle leaving the jacket across his elbows. “You enjoy saying how you loved her. Yet your eyes are saying you need more. How easy.”
“This isn’t a stage where you can flutter a hand and win a crowd.”
Fingers skate over, nails clipping the epidermis layer of skin, Isaac fully realising how purple those tips really are.
“This is easier. I only have to win you.”
As if counteracting, brittle anger filled that man’s eyes, his body hunched ever further as if ready to be beaten bloody. Luka half expected it, remembering the last physical infraction he was in resulted in some pink-blue-girl beating him purple. Some reaction outside of sickening words and silence could be satisfying. He was about to call it a victory worthwhile, before Luka felt the arm against him twisting, taking his nape before lips hit his.
He jolted, preparing to pull and push back with his teeth on guard, before Isaac broke the kiss almost immediately. Luka touched them, leaving only a lingering tingle. It was chaste. He knit his eyebrows together, glaring at whatever clue Isaac’s face could hold behind the gentle action.
“What? Never expected to be reciprocated back?” Isaac barely mumbled, his face fraught between every other mixed emotion and what Luka can only call lust. Ever so strange, the taller man looked more irritated at himself than at Luka.
Something clenched in Luka’s gut, wondering if there ever was. An equal exchange, unlike the ones with one conscious and the other unconscious. Or with a collar around his neck. Or crushing his arm in one stretch.
“Not ever from you.” Luka managed out, seeing a phantom frame of something beautiful, before he gripped Isaac’s chin- pulling it to leave drool and spit down his lips and in.
Kissing, they called it, Luka noted.
It was definitely the grief that never left, stress that ate at him (figuring out logistics of rations, why Till was still mute, warnings of the guards), or that Isaac simply has not whacked one out for so long. He definitely blamed at least one of those three for the predicament he was in.
They had started in the hallway, bickering that Isaac was near close to just leaving entirely, before the elite little prince kissed him in the sloppiest way possible. Isaac had punched him. Deserved. But then Luka taunted with a kiss and away they went. Isaac should have just left. But the bodily heave of weight and how it drowned the fried ends in his wrecked emotions out itches something through the kissing.
Isaac had to half guide them, mostly shuffle back and have Luka chase him, into Luka’s single room. Luka was incessant in having at least one grip on him, one hand clutched over his arm. At first Isaac thought the other man was intentionally forcing it as a sign of dominance or something else fucked up, but the way the hand shook made Isaac stop questioning it.
Luka tugged him along to the walls, the empty shelf and finally to the entirely too small bed. He pushed the other down, regaining something, before Luka grabbed him. The blonde was kissing so harshly that Isaac bit his tongue to soothe him back down, which luckily the other did. Isaac hated the underlying tone he was getting from this, as if intimacy was only taken, ripped and stolen from the other.
He most visibly saw it when neither of them stopped. Maybe too stubborn to prove something or just selfishly indulgent, that hands reached under shirts. However, when Isaac paid it in turn, fingers reaching over the skinny ribs of Luka’s, the blonde choked- in a bad way. Immediately he froze, Isaac pulling up to watch the pinned Luka shake; hands already clenched over his eyes, awaiting something to poke and penetrate through without even consenting. Isaac gulped down his own bile that Luka expected something like that from him. Maybe it was because Isaac was hunched right over him.
At that Isaac furiously scratched at his choppy hair before sitting properly up, shuffling back to release his grip and almost lazily sit on Luka’s lap.
“Hey.” He clicked his fingers to grab the blonde’s attention, “Look.”
Luka, wreckingly compliant, opened his eyes to follow Isaac. The focus in them returned as the other’s expression turned placid again. “What? Just do it.”
“Not with you looking like that. As I said, reciprocity, tell me what works for you.” Isaac groaned, irritated at the fact that Luka thought him so simply. “I’m not gonna just dig my hands in and break you like some monster.”
He further angrily cringed at the absolute confusion on Luka’s face.
“God, yeah you would be that fucked up. Who isn’t? You must be the most warped person I have ever met.”
Luka blinked, tilting his head almost cutely, “Don’t compliment me.”
“That’s not- Seriously?” Isaac sighed, rubbing his hand over his entire face- lingering around the scar. This was fruitless and made him look foolish. “Forget it, I’m just going to drink myself to death.”
However as Isaac started to shuffle off, he gasped as his hip was suddenly squeezed- Luka’s hand over it with a testy, almost-pleading look in his eye.
“Don’t leave me alone.”
It looked so permanently haunted, that Isaac indeed sat back down. He still couldn’t believe he was offering breadcrumbs to this pale, insincere man.
“Then tell me, what do you want? You started this.”
There was an uncanny silence and Isaac hated waiting to see Luka’s unreadable face slowly knit something together. The heat was almost gone now and honestly, Isaac could just sleep himself cold and forget this ever happened and bicker at Luka another day.
Finally, Luka murmured, practically a confession drawn from the other’s lips that sounded too good to be true.
“I want to control you.”
He crept a finger to Isaac’s neck, the touch half-gentle and half-unsettling.
“I want to break you open and understand your insides. I want to know how it works, so I can understand the system and how to make you work under me. Within my hands, my arms.”
Isaac was left gawking, smoothing a collapsed hand over his mouth, yeah he should have expected this. Freak, asshole, “Creep.” He even allows his inside voice to escape.
“Reciprocity.” Luka mumbled, almost jokily tossing his own words back, “You understand my terms now.”
‘Your move’ was left empty in the air.
Isaac knew he could have shoved him off and left right out the door. Luka did had any strength to actually hold on and break him, if Isaac didn’t want it. He could have even, while hypothetically leaving, flipped Luka off even if the other probably didn’t know its crude meaning.
Yet the last time he ever had slept with someone, with her back turned and helping her lift her prosthetic on— her tears still scarred into her skin, about how the Garden steals your body to such an extent. He missed kissing Hyuna and he missed kissing anyone. And Luka was warm. With the same disconnection in eyes that are meant to be human.
“I have to take responsibility, fuck.” Isaac whispered before delving down, silencing any other absolutely valid reasons telling him not to. He kissed Luka again, with the other stuttering.
“Fine. One time.”
…
Isaac understood what people mean when vulnerability can practically morph your body open. Like some open grave, or missing limb, carving you until you are nothing but your mere instincts. He seethed at the fact that sympathy sat at his core.
He was too new at all of this, having only slept with women and topped men, that he knew the right preparations but it was another to be on the other side. How kind was he, to offer his anal virginity to this blonde stick?
Isaac was half-balancing on the precipice between Luka’s legs. He had forced his head down onto the other’s shoulders to minimise any sounds he made. However, he could tell Luka was watching, always observing, every bit of motion. Especially now with Luka fixed on watching Isaac shuffle fingers inside himself, hurrying with the prep as soon as possible.
As Isaac bit down a wince, he felt cold tipped hands touch down his spine— too heavy to be light,
“Why do you do that?” Luka murmured as if curious.
“Why- because I’m a man and that’s not the usual spot for anyone to be sticking anything in?” Isaac uttered, feeling a tad skittish that he stilled. “You have to open it up.”
“You can force it in.”
“Do you want me to punch you again?”
Luka settled back down at that, yet his eyes were still skating over Isaac’s skin. Trying to transfer every action to mind. Maybe in that, it can feel almost mechanical that Isaac forgot where he was, before he curses again- cold fingers meeting his own this time.
“I want to control,” Luka replied, repeating the same words as before. Isaac considered knocking him upside in the head, but a foreign finger entered and he’s left shivering,
“Why are your hands so cold?” Isaac snapped out instead as indeed the temperature difference made his head spin more than it really should. He relented, letting Luka knit his fingers in slowly, just grabbing at the other’s knuckles to guide at an almost trickling pace.
“Your guts are merely too warm, that is how human internal temperature works.”
Isaac should be left fuming yet somehow the other grew somehow adept at it. He could see the other almost enjoying it, as if liking to coddle this taller man resting on top of him, sufficiently wiggling those fingers around. Yet Luka was really trying to learn and exploit every sound Isaac did make before he hid it up, that it soured but warmed his core.
Being picked apart, dissected and pale eyes watching, always watching. Finally, Issac slapped a hand over Luka’s own, ripping them out with a shiver.
“Get on with it.” Isaac quickly muttered, his words sounding too wet to sound completely authoritative, yet Luka silently followed. Must be satisfied with the fact that it’s Isaac collapsing over him.
Within one languid moment, he finally felt Luka physically move, shuffling into place as his fingers carved out one final time over the expanse of his body. As if adoring the way his pale fingers look on his tanner skin. Gripping too tightly, before Isaac made him loosen his hands.
Luka then leaned in, an almost practised elegance to it, as he pressed a half-kiss onto skin,
“You shouldn’t have never saved me.”
That whisper into skin was very abruptly forgotten, with Isaac about to ask, but he suddenly tossed into Luka’s lap and down completely. He felt the cock sink in, making a slight hiccup in his chest. He thumped his fist on Luka’s chest, to stifle any shifting movements in their hips.
“Bastard.” Isaac shivers, fingers lightly touching on Luka’s ribs and surgical scars.
Far too close. Far too full. He half thought Luka would be thrusting in furiously already, meaning this whole act as a form of bubbled up revenge, yet the other man was still. Waiting for Isaac’s order, watching his knit face, before the leader curled his hands over his flushed mouth and nodded.
It was mostly silent, sliding of liquid skin and scatterings of moans on either side. It was never quite enough, yet as Isaac gripped harder onto Luka’s thighs and the other guided his movements quicker— Isaac would let his brain melt. To forget who he hated, the valour and victories, a rocket exploded with too many victims and to forget the fact that he and Luka were scarily similar.
Seeing her in each gasp and shudder. Thrusting in fully and still seeing in the peripheral, maybe seeing stars from a specifically good spot. That the fact that they both were irrevocably, irreversibly changed after losing her. Sharing half-hearted kisses over both their facial scars.
A burn mark and a slashing scar.
Luka is still incited and teased with the idea of dying. He will eventually meet there, to the numerous medical conditions his heart has stocked up from experiment after experiment. Checking to see when the pace of his heart will flatten. It worsened without the medication Father had.
He danced with it when he tasted Hyuna’s drinks, touched the mic she must have sang with, and the many soldiers but humans that she had enlisted to a dream. A rocket, Isaac told him, sending our voices to cold space in hopes someone listens.
Luka was very adept at listening yet he failed to see the endeavours in all her actions then. To keep enslaving yourself to an idea of freedom, while not realising she was already one of the few strongest that would be kept safely by their seygeins. But he listened. Slowly, maybe, he understood.
It must have been her death that really made him value his own. However, there wasn’t any language to call it, to term the insidious anxieties he had, the tension that was actually guilt. The reason why he could see Hyuna and Hyunwoo over the horizon, what made Luka want to jump off and crack his neck free.
Luka just never expected it was another rebellion leader who could understand that. Him and her. The other had admitted, in another quiet night of drinking, or maybe in tears after too-close a touch in bed, that he loved their musicality. A beauty that only aliens could have made, because it strung out the limits of what a human could be, dehumanised into a pet, to only persist in being human in the end. Warped but optimistic.
He found Isaac somehow more naive than Hyuna. Luka half understood the differences; that he had killed her brother in front of her, blamed for the fact he found such ecstasy after by owning her alone. They never talked about it either, until it tainted anything that was ever good in their relationship. Instead, Issac talks excessively on it. How he apparently never fully blames anyone for Hyuna’s death. He never quite let go of it, blaming his own inaction (which was pitiful, for what else could Isaac have done more of? Compared to Luka, who was the intended target of the gun first.) Yet Isaac forgave him. It was sickening how innocent it was.
Luka still could not term what was between them two, what he felt for Isaac, as it was not love but near it. Hyuna was still resting inside his chest, in his bed, in the warm body that surrounds him after sex. He would have pleaded to her, let her wreck him wholly, but love is not meant to be intrusive. Her hallucination had chuckled at his love.
His relationship with Isaac held surface-level control but he relished it. He found the initial concept confusing, as confusing as being the one to thrust in during intimacy. To ‘kiss’ without it being one-sided, crushing, intrusive that Luke thought it reached into his brain to claw it out. Luka could simply ask, touch skin, nimble a kiss, and Isaac would mostly offer it back. It was almost fair, neither surrendering up completely. He can’t help but wonder what the benefits were anymore, as eventually intimacy never dug in the same desperate sadism they had needed before. It was like Isaac no longer hated him. So perhaps that is why Luka kissed his skin more gently.
Luka still didn’t know why he was alive. Even his last opponent, Till, the grey-one with shaking pupils as he realised he was permanently staying too in the rebellion, had accepted it. Till, Dewey, Isaac. Even several other members had accepted he could be alive. If anything they were more adamant about their relationship where Till had to hold back Dewey from tackling and tossing him out the base once they caught word of it.
Luka had wondered what else he could have offered. What other reason to be kept. He tried asking Isaac, hoping a little he didn’t hear it when he pressed the words over Isaac’s shoulder; it couldn’t be his face, it was grafted with something so ugly. It couldn’t be singing, he hasn’t tried singing in a long time. It couldn’t be-
“You don’t need that to be alive. You’re human, that's enough.” Isaac had murmured, before pushing him off because he was sweaty.
To be human. My life is mine.
Luka still didn’t understand what forgiveness, love, and humanity, fully meant when Hyuna choked it out. Her final will. Yet he somewhat sees it. A figment image, a hallucination, a structure of what he could be.
Perhaps he’ll understand it. He whispers it into Isaac’s knuckles, pressing his lips to them, no longer any blood to dirty per some performance.
How innocent his thoughts are, Luka silently murmured, how he liked the hypocrisy.